A Nocte Praetaritus
by Thief of Black Winged Hearts
Summary: A Night Forgotten. One thing Harry has realized, is that everyone has secrets, things that should remain unseen. How was he to know what would happen to him in the graveyard of Godric's Hollow, one snowy evening? Not a slash fic. Rated T for languege


Hello! Wow, I hate saying this, but...my first HP fic! This is so freaking exciting! Gotta say, I watched the last movie a couple days ago and it really inspired me to write more. Typical reaction; see good movie, write crappy fanfiction. Well, not too crappy, I hope.

Now, I made poor Severus a little OOC in this fic, but let me make this point; he's drunk. Like, smashed drunk, and everyone acts out of character while intoxicated. Also, this is not in any way a HP/SS shipping fic. It's just two people who happen to meet under unfortunate circumstances.

Without further ado... on with the show!

With love, Thief of Black Winged Hearts

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><p><span>A Nocte Praetaritus<span>

The graveyard was cold. It was the first thing that Harry noticed when he portkeyed from the safety of Hogsmeade to the stone gates of the graveyard at Godric's Hollow. It really wasn't much colder than the winter chill in Scotland, but the temperature had dropped enough to notice. It was a stupid thing to think about, Harry realized, but really his brain did that often. Made him think about the mundane instead of the pressing, the immediate, the important. Like Voldemort for instance, now seeming to run practically every waking thought of his. Or what day it was today, as England's winter drifted around him gently in the black night, spiraling flakes drifting past his eyes. With each soft inhalation and exhalation, a silver cloud flew from his open mouth, dissipating into the starless night. It reminded him of a Patronus, he thought, the way it would evaporate like mist in the morning sun. He tilted his head back, hands in the pockets of his coat, letting the snow caress his face like touches from a loved one. His green eyes were sad, the emotion darkening the jade green into a deeper emerald. A much darker color, but no less beautiful.

Today was the day. The day two people had given everything away, trading their lives for the life of their only son. Sacrifice had so little meaning once you are dead, thought Harry, watching the silver clouds of his breath float up into the night. It is only those living, left behind, who can truly define that sacrifice. Harry grinned ruefully at the velvet black of the clouded night sky. He certainly hoped that he had turned his parents sacrifice into something they could be proud of.

It was so quiet. That was the second thing Harry noticed as he took his first steps forward, trailing a single hand along the stone arch of the graceful church gate into the cemetery. His eyes idly traced the structure before drifting forward, towards the rows and rows of marble sentinels, rounded guardians of the dead. His steps barely made a sound, the snow muffling everything but the faintest clean crunch of crushed snow. The snow covered all, swallowing the smallest noises, where they quietly expired in that white encompassing blanket. Over this field of death there was nothing, nothing besides the tombstones and grave markers but the occasional gaunt tree, cloaked in gentle white. Harry hunched his shoulders a little against the cold but kept walking slowly, moving among the graves, down the long rows.

He had argued, long and hard, with several people, about whether or not he should even be allowed outside the castle walls. Mrs. Weasley had been especially insistent that this trip was far too dangerous for such little gain. Harry had argued back that he was a fifth year, surely he was old enough that they could not deny him this privilege, this one right given to him by the dead. Finally, Dumbledore had intervened, not directly of course. Oh no, he wasn't deemed important enough by the great lord Dumbledore to be graced with his direct, face-to-face attention. He had proposed, to Remus and Mrs. Weasley, a compromise. A spell that would let him pass undetected, for this one night, unseen by anyone not a Secret Keeper for the Order. He and a couple others would be on standby, only a Patronus away if there was trouble of any sort. It was funny, because even though the old man had been avoiding him lately, he had known him well enough to know his next request would be to go alone.

It had taken weeks of convincing. Many had offered to go with him, for support and protection. Hermione had been the only one who had simply smiled at him, telling him that she and Ron would be waiting for his return. Sometimes, Harry felt like she was the only one who could understand, who could reach down inside and simply _see _him. No one else, except maybe the old man, could do that.

So now he walked alone, at night, for the first time, through the graveyard of his home town. Towards his parent's graves, where they lay, cold in their everlasting sleep, beneath the ground, gone from the world before he could even commit their faces and their voices to memory. Was that too much to ask of life? That he could maybe remember what his parents looked like, sounded like? It felt that way most of the time. Life had this knack of beating him around.

The snow fell heavier now, catching the light from the church where they were singing hymns of times long past by, looking like white fire drifting through the night. It built up in his hair, and on his shoulders, but Harry didn't mind. He felt rather like the snow and the night at the moment; cold, dark and empty. Numb. _It's okay to feel, you know_, came a little voice from the back of Harry's head. He chuckled once, a brief sound that held no real merriment. It sounded a lot like Hermione. Figured she could get into his head like that.

_I really don't know what to feel, 'mione. I don't know if I _can_ feel,_ thought Harry, headed for the tallest tree in the graveyard. It was there, he had been told, right underneath, that his parents had been buried.

Through the night and the sorrow he moved, looking like a ghost soundlessly drifting through the pale field. The tree grew bigger and bigger in the darkness, but Harry didn't falter. He just kept walking, moving forward. He wished that he had had this opportunity before, especially while he was growing up. It would have been nice to have something of them to think about, to hold on to. Then, the tree seemed to appear without warning in the night, and he saw the stones, and the names. _Lily Potter. James Potter._

But he wasn't alone. There was someone there already.

It was a man, Harry could tell, just by the shape of his shoulder and back. Dressed all in black, he could have been a mourner stepped right from a funeral, except for the wizard's robe he wore. He was on his knees in front of his parents graves, almost collapsed in front of them. His back was bowed to the point where his head almost touched the snowy ground beneath him. His hands were curled around him, seemingly not to ward off the cold, but almost as if to hold himself together. Judging by the snow that had build up on his back and was not wreathed in his long, black hair, he had been here for some time. He was shaking, back heaving not from the cold, Harry discovered as he took two hesitant steps forward. This man was crying, sobbing like he was being torn apart from the inside out. It was so violent, so _grieved, _that Harry almost took a step back. He felt, against his will, ashamed, like this was something so private that he had no right to witness this man fall to pieces. Like it wasn't his parent's grave the man was in front of, but the grave of someone this man loved. Because the man cloaked in black was crying with all the intensity of a child, with the release of control children were so at ease with.

Forgetting, completely and utterly, that this man wouldn't see him, wouldn't hear him, wouldn't feel him, he silently walked up to him, bending down and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder while say, with a murmur, "Sir…"

To his shock and surprise, the man stood in a flash at his touch, jerking up in a manner that was almost violent, knocking his hand aside. He was facing him now, this dark wizard with the long black hair, and Harry made an involuntary sound of surprise, eyes going wide. Because there, in the darkness of the snowy graveyard, crying in front of the graves of Harry's parents like his soul was being torn in two, was Professor Severus Snape.

Obsidian eyes, rimmed red and streaked with tears, met his green, the only real thing he had of his mother's. Harry was so shocked, taken aback, and confused it was hard to figure out what those eyes held in them. Hatred, love, panic, despair, and fear, all blurred together with the animal urge to escape, that primal, instinctive way of protection. Harry saw Snape's eyes flicker to his face as his surname was mouthed on those hated lips. Harry saw the wand gripped in hand, the pivot of the beginning of the turn, and realized that he could not let this go. "Professor!" he yelled, lunging forward and grabbing the sleeve of Snape's robe just as he completed his turn, and the two disappeared from the graveyard, leaving the silence and the snow and the dead behind.

Images, the feeling of being squeezed through a very tight tube. Harry's mind whirled and blurred as they Apparated, the only thing grounding him to the world being the cold, wet texture of the sleeve he had grabbed. Snape's sleeve. Severus's sleeve.

Then reality decided to come back to him like a noiseless explosion outward, and Harry found himself back at Hogwarts, in Snape's office. Still dizzy from Apparating, he was thrown off balance as Snape wrenched his hand from his sleeve, before spinning around to face him, eyes devoid of anything except fury. "Get out of my office, Potter," he snarled, and Harry blinked because it was so far away from the normal, controlled tone he was used to hearing. Soaking wet, eyes roaming to and fro, unable to focus, Snape seemed to sway gently as if the room was moving under his feet. His eyes drifted over to Snape's desk, and saw a near-empty decanter of whiskey and a shattered glass on the floor beside it.

Ah.

"I don't think I can do that, Professor," Harry said, trying to keep his voice as calm and as level as he possibly could. No need to throw oil on this already dangerous and volatile fire. But he needed answers, and he was going to get them, whether Snape killed him in the process or not. If there was one thing he couldn't do, it was leave a mystery unsolved.

"Get the _hell _out of my office!" Snape yelled, gesturing violently and swaying a little, eyes wild and hazy. Harry was getting the impression that Snape barely knew what was going on, let alone who Harry was. That whiskey must be potent stuff. "Now!"

"No," said Harry firmly, gazing straight into Snape's eyes. Using every bit of his reputably foolish Gryffindor bravery, he squared his shoulders and stood his ground. "You owe me answers, Professor."

Gazing intently into those deep obsidian eyes, Harry saw the moment Snape completely snapped. "Like fucking _hell_ I do!" Snape roared, teeth bared in a snarl. With a sweep of his arm everything on his desk came crashing to the hard stone floor. Papers scattered, ornaments shattered, and the glass decanter shattered so the smell of whiskey filled the room. Lunging forward, Snape grabbed Harry by the front of his shirt, tripping in the process. As Snape fell to his knees, his death grip on Harry's shirt brought Harry down with him, so they had both fallen to their knees on the cold stone floor. Through his shock, Harry realized that while Snape wasn't shaking him or hurting him, his hands were trembling.

"Why do you have to look like _her_!" Snape shouted, glaring down at him, his eyes wide. He looked…haunted. That was the only word Harry had for the look on his face. "Why do you have to have her fucking eyes?" he asked softly, head bowed so his hair curtained his face as Harry's shirt slipped from his slackened grip.

Harry didn't know this man. He wasn't the evil professor who docked points with sadistic pleasure. He wasn't the arrogant man who would dance in with a sneer, ruin his life, and then dance back out. He wasn't the level-headed spy that he saw at Order meetings. He wasn't cold. He wasn't controlled. He was…human. And Harry, having everything he was ever perceived about this man shattered before his very eyes, didn't know what to do. This wasn't the person he had known.

"Get out," Snape whispered, arms falling limply at his sides. All the fight had gone out of him, leaving him a shell of a man. If there was one thing that defined Snape to Harry, it was his control. But that was long gone, leaving Snape vulnerable and uncontained. All of the thing Snape had never let Harry see, had never let anyone see, were there. The smell of whiskey wound its way into Harry's brain.

Harry swore, right there, with whatever god might be up there as his witness, that he was never going to get that drunk. Ever. To give Snape some credit, he hadn't slurred yet. Maybe that self-control was still there…somewhere. Harry just had to go find it.

"Leave me alone, Lily," Snape muttered, and Harry froze. His mother? "Haven't you haunted me enough? Why can't I let you go?" He looked up abruptly, staring Harry in the eyes, his green eyes exactly like his mother's. Harry looked back, staring at someone he had never really seen before, who had no right to misjudge the way he did. Snape's eyes spoke to Harry of many years of sorrow, never diminished, never forgotten. Harry felt no hatred in that one moment for the man who knelt before him.

Harry sighed, running a hand through his ever-messy hair. "Listen," he said quietly to the man in front of him. "I don't think…I don't think she could have hated you nearly as much as I think you hate yourself. But then again, what do I know? I'm still confused as hell."

Snape seemed to squint for a moment through his wild black hair, then groaned. "Not Lily. Potter," he sighed, seeming to come back to himself. "I should have known." He shook his head a little, rising unsteadily to his feet. Harry rose as well, unsure of what he should do now. Snape seemed to be rummaging through his pockets in an absentminded fashion, before pulling out his wand. Harry tensed, hand moving towards his wand in his back pocket.

"My apologies, Potter," he said tiredly, looking haggard. He seemed to have fear and regret in his eyes. "Maybe someday you will know the whole truth."

"Wait, sir, what do you mean, the whole truth?"

"Oblivi-"

End

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><p>I hoped you all liked that bit of randomosity that I cared to share with you. There may be a part two in the form of another oneshot if I can just get off my butt and write it. Please review! Feed the review monster in me, I dare you!<p> 


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